What We Do
by LadyTigerFuyuko
Summary: SpardaxEva fic for laryna6. How in the world does a legendary dark knight get together with a human woman? What did they have in common? How did they get past their differences? Why do what they did? A exploration of these questions, through their eyes. 1
1. Chapter 1

**Fuyuko: Well, apparently I can be motivated to write. **

**Sparda: Motivation, what moves us, it can be something as simple as a glance at the sky, and yet, so few of us find it easily. **

**Eva: I'm fairly certain she can be motivated to keep us halfway in character easily. **

**Sparda: Fair lady, please don't resort to excessive violence. She is a human, and although you have not my vow, I know you are a kind enough soul not to hurt a deranged person.**

**Fuyuko: What he said. Don't hurt the innocent author until after she's mutilated your great characters. I seriously shouldn't be trying this, neither of you goes around angsting properly, you're too resilient. Maybe I should break you, that would work…Disclaimer-Bot, will you take over for a bit while I'm, er, busy?**

**Disclaimer-Bot: Certainly. I hereby disclaim the author chick's rights to Sparda, Eva, and DMC. I also disclaim her right to wreak havoc on the emotions of any being, though I myself do not understand why this is important. My understanding of these emotions is limited to the data my external analyzers transmit to my circuits. **

**Fuyuko: Defeated by robot logic. Ouchie.**

**&**

**What We Do (There Is No Need for Why)**

**&**

"_One day, he took a path he'd been told not to, only seeking a glimpse of what was forbidden down its length. On that day, he took a look in the mirror of the river of life's water, and sought to change what he saw. Only after his day of discovery could others see the light, be offered new ideas of what it meant to live. One day, we were saved by him, for we were part of the light and could see truth through its bright ray, and offered thanks to him who we knew was different. On that day, he too saw what the light showed us, saw that all was not as simple as the law of the mightiest, and still owing his own strength to his people, he wished only for them to escape the darkness, to offer them the gift of the light." _

There was a slight breeze stirring the grounds around the desolate grave marker, but as the blonde woman stood over it, she was still a bit too put off to notice the crisp fall wind brushing around her form. It played with the braided ends of her red shawl, homespun but hardy; it had been made to endure more than just the average rain shower. Like herself.

She wasn't a product of the modern era, and she wasn't a proper lady of earlier years either. She was her own support, she was tough, and she did what had to be done, because it was all she had left. _'What's being a proper lady worth anyway? What's the point in being modern if you still aren't you? I'm only doing this because it's what I do. There isn't a why.' _Her green eyes betrayed the rough manner in which she lived, the brusque clarity with which she saw the truth of what lurked in the dark.

She'd forgotten exactly why she'd come onto this path; probably saw too much, just like they were always telling her. But she had never been able to forget herself, even though she knew her life had changed.

Once, long ago, she could remember a voice telling her that to kill was wrong, that the only light of justice was through God. On this day, she found herself wondering if that voice had been right, if she'd ever get peace for herself and her losses by vengeance. Off in the distance, away from the grave marker she stood over, an opulent mansion was still burning, taking to the ground with it the remains of another opportunity for vigilante justice.

The young woman who went by Eva walked away from the old marker of death, wrapping her blood-colored shawl tighter around her shoulders to keep out the chill. There really hadn't been anything here for her this time either, besides the government paycheck she'd get for taking out a big city mob's smuggling site.

That, and a cryptic epitaph that had made no sense or relation to her whatsoever. Why had Redgrave said she'd find clues here? Unless she was missing out on some hidden code, the grave's message had clearly not been useful, and nothing in the mob mansion had turned up evidence either. Besides, he'd said she would need to look for a grave, and this had been the only one around for miles.

And she doubted the person the headstone was dedicated to could tell her anything, he was dead, after all. Last time she checked, grave markers that intricate only went up when someone with money croaked, like the old mob boss the guy had probably been. Sparda, yeah, that sounded like a weird mafia codename. Short and bastardized form of Spartacus, how quaint. She bet the real Spartacus rolled in his grave over that irony.

"I'm out of here. Redgrave has clearly lost his marbles when it comes to supplying good information anymore."

Ignoring the acrid stench of burning paint, glass, and wood, Eva made her way back by the building she'd wreaked and to her motorcycle hidden in the trees near the long gravel drive. She had a long ride back into the city, and she wanted to get back to the agency to collect her paycheck before the evening closing. Bounty hunters had to keep good finances too, these days, even if they still lived on the edge otherwise.

The blonde young woman cranked her motorcycle, its red paint dull with age, and spun a one hundred eighty degree turn and roared off. Gravel spray fell slowly to earth in her wake, emulating the timbers now crashing to the ground from the flame engulfed manor. She'd been nicknamed 'Evacuator' once, an attempt by another bounty hunter to smother her popularity, but the barb had only escalated her in the eyes of unscrupulous employers who wanted nothing left at their job sites.

Funny that, she'd left nothing behind her for years now, not since that horrifying time. Maybe it was some sick twist of fate, that she'd never have a past behind her anymore, that she wouldn't leave a lasting mark on the world besides one of emptiness and destruction. Was that Redgrave's clue? Was he trying to make her see how dead-end her current bounty hunter life was, trying to get her to move on after all these years of hard work and even companionship?

'_He could try it, I guess, but nobody's ever been able to control me or tell me what to do. Not even those freaks could break me'_, she thought with a dull smile as her faded red bike roared out onto the country road. Roar being the best word nowadays, as its throaty engine purr had long since gone by the wayside, having been driven way beyond recommended mileage and through muck that wasn't good for even a machine's health.

Yeah, she'd seen a lot of crap in the past few years, but that kind of came with the territory she'd selected post-mortem. Not that she was dead or anything, unless you went by the records the feds kept. Not exactly like she minded that record either, it made it easy to put her past behind her, to become the new person she had needed to be to survive in the hunting field.

Trouble was, it was one of those jobs you could never walk away from, something that would control the rest of her life. At the time, it had seemed like a good idea, she'd only wanted to finish what was started, but now…

Whatever. She hadn't gone back or backed down from anything before, she wouldn't start now. Even if her mentor thought otherwise. He didn't control her life, he knew that, she knew that, not much left to be done but have a difference of opinions.

Reaching one of those indiscriminate suburbs all cities had, Eva stopped for gas, regretting that having an old, well-cherished motorcycle also meant having an outdated, undersized fuel tank. On the way in to pay for her gas, she bumped into an elderly gentleman, who wasn't as feeble as most his age were, as she nearly fell down from the run-in. She braced for the concrete impact with her elbows, even years of tough gunfights and bruising missions didn't make the pain of a fall less.

Amazingly, she didn't fall, although she wasn't sure how she didn't, because good balance only helped before you stumbled. Intending to just shrug it off with a simple "I'm sorry, sir, I didn't see", Eva's words fell flat and fumbling as the white-haired gentleman – _'Because who the heck else wears a leisure suit like that to a gas station?'_ – bowed to her, left arm bent at the waist and feet together. It looked like way too formal, maybe even uncomfortable. How many people could bend a perfect ninety degrees at the waist with their feet and legs held so stiffly together like that?

"My dear lady, you have my sincerest apologies. I was preoccupied, however, that is no excuse for me to have bumped you so rudely and roughly. Are you all right?" The blonde woman tried not to gawk at him, tried not to wonder how his face looked so smooth and young when his hair was obviously that of someone damn near ancient.

"I'm fine. You…you're not hurt, either?" Why was she concerned like this? Nobody really got injured from bumping into someone else, even if that someone else was twice their size, which wasn't the case here at all. Maybe her dead parents had been right about courtesy being contagious. At any right, this was weird.

"I am fine, my dear. It certainly helps to see such good manners from one of your age as well." He was standing upright now, and the more she thought about it, the less he looked like a feeble old man. Maybe the white hair was a dye-job? People did funny things these days…but then, he acted and spoke like an old-fashioned gentleman, calling her a dear and referring to her as part of the youth.

She really could not pinpoint this guy, and somewhere, in her hunter's mind, that set off alarms. Years of needing to tag people immediately made it unnerving to be unable to do it now, even if it was just some harmless civilian guy with eccentric characteristics. She nodded, managed a smile she thought could be called soft, and they parted, him turning away to what she presumed was his car in the station lot, her heading inside the convenience store to pay for her gas.

Eva thought she'd managed to shake off the encounter by the time she'd gotten back on her motorcycle; she'd seen stranger people in her line of work, and hell if she was one to judge someone on their behavior or dress. She'd be a hypocrite if she tried it, and there were enough hypocrites in the world already.

What she couldn't shake was how the rest of her trip to the city seemed mundane all of a sudden, without any reason for it to be so. Couldn't have been him, he wasn't bad, but he wasn't what girls would have called mind-blowing either, and even if he had been, she'd never been the type to go gaga over a gorgeous face. Eva, and who she'd been before, wasn't a woman at the mercy of her hormones, at least in her opinion. She looked, she admired, but she didn't sink into a pretty person, even if they had good manners to go with it.

Grasping her paycheck from the agency teller and walking out, Eva had the disturbing realization that maybe she wasn't over her encounter with the white-haired man. Great. This might ruin her image at the local information hub if she didn't get the stars out of her eyes, and fast_. 'The last thing I need is to lose face with those idiots. Redgrave seeing me like this I could handle, but anyone else, and I may as well kiss my bounty hunting blood money good-bye'_, she thought sourly as she walked out of the agency.

It was an inconspicuous building set on the outskirts of the downtown strip, out of the bad neighborhoods, but not encroaching on the ritzy ones either. When Redgrave had first taken her there, she'd been confused, thinking it illogical for a guild of bounty hunters to be based near the hubbub of the city, but after her first few jobs, she'd understood it to be the best locale. It was easy to reference to out-of-towners, and it was central to most of those who were permanent. Besides, not many outsiders to the field would find it suspicious, which probably cut down on backlash coming directly to the headquarters for all the local bounty hunters.

Still at a bit of a loss and, she admitted, frustrated with her current lack of a solid poker face, Eva headed to the little townhouse she called home. Her bank had an ATM with deposit functions within four blocks of home, so she took the slightly longer route and dropped off her 'dirty money', as her type jokingly called it, twirling a pistol in her right hand as she entered the poorer neighborhood.

Nobody had the guts to come after her these days, not in this branch of the city, but it never hurt to give out reminders. Really, that incident with those weed dealing thugs a year or so back had made her a local hero of sorts to the destitute trying to hold down normal lives near here, even if her batty old landlady hadn't gotten any less stringent with the rules for their shared townhouse after it. She hadn't gotten evicted yet either, so it must mean the lady had some respect for her, as the word was she had some paranoia about keeping the same tenant for more than three years, and should have kicked Eva out long ago.

Setting most of her arsenal down just inside her bedroom's doorway when she got back, a glance in her old and dusty mirror had her green eyes telling her how tired she really was. Deciding she wasn't really hungry enough to go back out for food, and that what she had in the fridge was probably bad, Eva tucked one of her loaded pistols under her saggy pillow and kicked off her outdoor boots. They'd been the most rugged and tough thing she'd bought over time, trying to find practical shoes for her job, but even they had flaws, and she'd have loved something a bit more orthopedic after a long day like this one.

Then, she flopped back onto her bed, liking the creak its metal frame made as she curled into the sheets, fully clothed. This was home, this was normal, sleeping with one eye open and everything, she wouldn't trade it for the world, and she hoped it never changed. Screw Redgrave's confusing clues and advice, she knew who she was and what she did. That really was all there was to it, all that she needed.

'_Screw that white-haired guy, too, I don't need that either'_, she thought fuzzily as her eyes slid closed. Just before her mind completely blanked, though, she couldn't help but be bothered by the thought that maybe that wasn't all there was to it. Maybe, like someone had once told her, an unusual change like that was going to change everything. It had happened before, after all. Her whole world had been up-ended then, why did she not expect it to happen now?

**&**

**Fuyuko: That wasn't so bad, after I got to typing it. Unfortunately, it seems to want to be more than a one-shot. I do not exactly need another chapter fic. **

**Eva: It's DMC, you can't help but be drawn in by its plot and characters, wonderful ones like me. **

**Fuyuko: No, actually I think it's just the lack of my ability to be concise. Anyways, this is a gift-fic for Laryna6, I hope she enjoys it. Sorry if they're OOC, or details aren't correct, and for this being last minute and basically inconclusive. Hopefully I can finish it with one more part. Review if you feel like it, it's always welcomed.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Fuyuko: Gah. I give up. Fanfiction has a mind of its own, and I might as well not resist it, As you can probably tell, this is the second chapter of my Sparda and Eva fic. I'm really hoping it doesn't get too long, I just want to give them backgrounds and a reason to have gotten together.**

**Eva: He's an all powerful demon knight that saved the world, what other reasons do I need? **

**Fuyuko: You forgot the whole being hot and having sexy silver hair in human form thing. **

**Eva: Yeah, there is that. And intense blue eyes. **

**Sparda: Do continue, this is most flattering. **

**Fuyuko: Um, no. I have a chapter to start, and the legendary Sparda doesn't need his ego fed anymore. Honestly, you have a freaking legend, what more do you want? **

**Disclaimer-Bot: It has been my observation that an ego is the one thing all non-robots have in common, and it shall be always be their downfall. But for the time, I continue to serve the author in disclaiming all her rights to Devil May Cry and its inclusive characters and trademarks. Enjoy the following chapter, fleshlings. **

**&**

**What We Do**

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Life went on pretty much the same as it had for Eva Manchester, however, despite her odd encounter at the gas station earlier that month. She scraped up a few small jobs here and there, blew up cover-ups and dirty dealings, went home and lived as a normal person, left again to blow up someone else's plans, returned and acted normal, cashed in her money, paid it out in bills and expenses, and went looking for more work. That was the only downer about bounty hunting, you never seemed to make enough to cover the costs. And she wasn't even factoring in the other costs, like having to see people treated like cannon fodder or worse, getting the innocent ones out of the way.

Most of her co-workers – if that's even what they could be considered, what with hiring competition – wouldn't have bothered with that kind of personal crap, but Eva never could shut herself off to human need. Human greed, sure, she'd done that a long time ago, when it became apparent that nobody would help her out of the goodness of their hearts, but never could she refuse to help others herself. It was probably the only thing that set her back from the larger, more intense, and obviously better paying jobs, but it was one principle she was not up for changing.

'_I might be a bitch, but I'm a bitch who's willing to look after lost sheep and doesn't see a problem with that.'_ She'd even done favors for people around town early on, before she'd come into the heart of Los Angeles, and before she'd had to take up a tougher line. Being a bounty hunter had monetary rewards, sure, but Eva felt she had a more successful career when she was 'small-time', working with people who would remember her a little more gratefully.

Heck, sometimes a few had even tried to help her out in return, like that old couple who were a retired narcotics cop and a police informant. They'd offered the use of their old contacts within the force to her, but when she'd turned that down out of sheer hunter pride, they'd asked if there was any information they could get her anyway. Eva remembered being stunned with herself and her runaway mouth when she'd asked if they would look into an incident in her past for her. Even more surprising was that the old man, the former informant, had called her later that summer and asked her to drop by for a chat.

A bit, shell-shocked and needlessly suspicious that he remembered her at all, because she wasn't as glamorous or well-known back in those days, Eva had still gone out to see them. They'd told her what they and some contacts had managed to dig up on the incident, and also had told her that the little digging they had done was a far as anyone could go, because the case was classified at a national level. She was sure they found the restriction as odd as she had, but neither of them had bothered to ask her about it further. Maybe they had already known how she was involved in it. _'I hope they didn't, I'd rather leave that well behind me.'_

Munching on a stale bagel and desperately wishing she had stocked up on coffee, eggs, and bacon earlier that week, Eva stood at her kitchen window trying to avoid thinking about what she'd been told was nonsense anyway. She'd been the only person to walk away free from the incident, and as far as any officials were concerned, she hadn't really done that either. That was one of the many things she could say made her truly mad about the handling of it, was that her case had been shoved aside and her identity had been taken with it. The feds that had been in charge were hard-ballers, and they didn't want any stupid teenage girls spewing stories to the media, so they'd forced her to say she was dead on paper, and then pulled out other papers to give her a rebirth.

Her right hand wove its long, calloused, and strong fingers into her even longer locks of slightly wavy blonde hair, trying to absolve some of the emotional stress she was stirring in herself. It was a Saturday morning, so there really wasn't anything she was looking forward to doing. Some laundry, sure, and shopping for food, which she couldn't forget, but nothing pressing came to mind for today. And she never thought about it, but she knew it wouldn't hurt her to do it today. She wasn't working, and it might help her hit her target heart rate for the day. Not that thinking about it would get her anywhere, nobody believed her, and most people barely believed anything had happened besides the terrorist bomb the feds had blamed.

Right. Terrorists couldn't even come close to the kind of terror she'd experienced that day, although now she wondered if she really had experienced what she thought she had. _'It was so insane, and it couldn't have been, no matter what the sci-fi channel tells people about the supposed other side. That's just bull-crap rigged up for foolish people.'_ Nobody really sees that kind of thing, was what the feds had told her, and it was the only thing they'd spewed out that she wanted to believe. Because believing otherwise was just too strange, even for someone like her, who'd seen just how low and sick and twisted the world got.

But that still left the question of who had actually committed that atrocity she'd had to endure as her old self, a question she never found an answer for otherwise. Redgrave had believed her verifiably insane version of what had occurred that time even when he'd first met her, but he'd never tell her why he believed it. These days, she knew he had a rep for being an eccentric coot besides being a master and well-connected bounty hunter, so the blonde woman chalked it up to him having some crazy beliefs in another world of some kind. Kinda funny if you thought about it, because he was otherwise and very straight-forward and needing to see it to believe it kind of guy.

Didn't matter, she thought, rinsing the sink and filling it with water, not anymore than his cryptic game of clues had. He'd managed to get her onto two more jobs that month with odd-ball messages and information involved in them somewhere, much to her growing frustration. One more and she'd tell him to lay off, to get a kick playing head games with someone else, because she was totally not going to stand for that kind of bull-crap. She liked puzzles, sure, and stretching the old brain muscle never hurt anyone, but that did not mean she waned to be given stupid rhymes about some idiotic, peace-loving, rebellious dead guy who obviously hadn't even done what he'd set out to do.

Of course, her smart-ass mentor had told her that was completely not the point of the first riddle he'd guided her to, but she couldn't make anything else out of it. His second clue had involved tiptoeing delicately through a rich supporter of the Old South's outdated and even more whacked out library when she would have preferred to go rampaging through it like the rest of his supercilious and old-fashioned estate. She'd been glad to open him a new air hole in the forehead after the library crap, although, that was something she had been planning from the start. The employer hadn't said whether they wanted him dead or alive, and there was only so much patriarchal and racist idiocy a woman like her could take before somebody got blow by her trusted Magnums.

The third and most recent clue of Redgrave's barely even merited thinking about, it was so useless. Sword in the stone kind of girl she was not, and if a book on ancient legends and lore as well as an old headstone had failed to point that out, then she was sure her ranting about the last one had been sufficient to nail home the issue. Redgrave had better have learned that she was not a damsel needing to be saved from anything or anyone, including herself, or else she might have to really drive the point home physically. It was okay for him to be concerned about her well-being, as her mentor she couldn't deny him that position, but it was another thing for him to be expressing that through stupid wild goose chases. Either give her legitimate jobs worth her time and effort, or stay out of her hair, because what she did and who she was now did not make time for the run-around.

Eva finished washing dishes and putting away dishes in her tiny kitchen, and figured she'd move on to the equally menial but necessary task of doing laundry next when her phone decided to go screeching of its hook. Honestly, she hoped it was a telemarketer, not because she needed to scream, of course not, but because both Ferino and Redgrave knew Saturday was her flop day and that she refused to be bothered unless it was a code doomsday type of thing. She picked it up anyway, no sense in avoiding her phone no matter who it was on the other end.

"Hello?"

"Hey, Manchester, hope you're not busy, because I've got…"

"Redgrave, you know damn well I don't work today, it's flop day, Saturday, and I am taking it off. Always have, always will…"

"Unless the world ends, I know, I know, kid, but listen this is kind of a serious issue here, and I don't have anyone else to give it to."

"Or you're just saying that to send me on another goose-chase. I told you, I'm done with the clues game, even though I appreciate your concern."

"This has nothing to do with that, er, well, no, no, it has nothing to do with that. I swear, Manchester, really I do. And I really don't have time to discuss this on the phone, because it really is a code, um, whatever it is you call it."

"A code doomsday? Sky looks fine to me, no meteors in it. But I'll come down to the Agency anyways."

"Actually, it'd be better if you could go to the shore, trust me, I'll meet you there. Ferino's trying to round up some boys to go with us right now."

"Us? Waitaminute, this isn't some regular gig is it? What the heck's going on Redgrave?" She waited for a response for about a minute, and said his name once or twice more before she got the automated line disconnected response from the phone company.

As soon as its tape began reeling, she was tossing the phone onto the hook and grabbing up guns, ammo, and of course, her shawl. Her boots she tore into the small and messy bedroom for and went to slam on before her brain made the stretch that pants would be a benefit under her mid-thigh length dress. She pulled up a pair of khakis, they were the only thing at hand, and was still jamming her feet into her boots as she ran at her door, snatching her keyring on the way out. This was nothing small, and she wasn't going to leave her guys hanging, no matter what her landlady was screaming about reckless women and leaving doors unlocked. There was the main door to the building anyway and it was always locked because the landlady was so paranoid.

Eva Manchester was in such a hurry she sped past a pair of cops so fast they decided not to put down their coffee to chase the crazy lady on the old motorcycle, even if they could have caught her. Didn't matter, she wouldn't have stopped if they had, she was way too determined to get to where she had to be and do what needed to be done, and nothing was going to get in her way. Determination had taken her out of her old life, saved it even, and built her a new one, one which it would help her hold on to no matter what. Not even life's best curveball and all of reality's laws could take her off course now.

**&**

**Fuyuko: And that is the second chapter folks, which I honestly thought would never get written. Must be avoiding something else.**

**Eva: Wouldn't be my son, would it?**

**Fuyuko: Hm? No, I'll get to that, but it has definite of some revision and serious thought before it goes anywhere. Anyway, till next time, whenever, that is, folks.**

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